A Heaven of Others (7 page)

To say again because repetition. Because repetition is the death of death.

To say maturation to infinity means an evolution beyond who you were born to be. Means a boiling to the point of air. Means an assimilation to the sky and its vault. Never forget the vault. To say an escape from all conditions and contingencies inescapable in life. A means of divestment, of all assets to prove anything but. A denial of inheritance. Dissent from who. A negation of lines, fences, walls in the shade of their very existence. Exigencies. Means that though I am in the wrong heaven it is only because I think this is the wrong heaven (and so to say that once I believed the wrong heaven was possible, that wrongheaveness was in fact fungible, a presence the universe does not contradict nor even challenge). Doubtless I will mature past all thought at some future of eternity. Now. Or other. Soon in the oases’ prism of soon, I await. An I, I wait doubtless.

Listen and I will say what I have said. In this heaven as in any heaven I am no longer a Jew. In this heaven as in any heaven I am no more a Jew than I’m not. Jewful and Jewless. Listen. Then hear. Understand. To be religious in heaven is to be truly fanatic. Every day is no day and is Sabbath. There is no more reward. There is nothing to live for and no whys to pray. Listen in no heaven am I named what I once thought my name was. What once I Jonathan knew my name to be. What my Jonathan had been according to those who had named me (Aba and the Queen, after my greatgrandAba dead) and not what my name is of myself. My name for myself is now merely Listen, to follow the laws, which are merely the hatreds, of the living while in heaven is to disrespect your own death. To adapt. No longer. To survive. Not anymore. In no heaven is my Aba my Aba, and the Queens here are no Queen of mine. To be forever estranged, even amid your own congregation, and to be forever wandering, even within your own encampment, and only because they make me a stranger, and only because they make me a wanderer, they who would be I only if, I who would be they only why—the selfelected elect, the selfchosen chosen, the selfrighteously rightful inhabitants of this heaven who are still religious, amazingly so, even here, who have here become even more religious, ever more religiously religious, amazingly so, especially here. Listen to my mouth disembodied. Hear through my ears, one pierced, the other is shredded. Understand through me exploded, dispersed, ensharded, in pieces. That parts of me: a finger, a toe, a nose or else a liver, an antique residue of our anatomy: a spleen—they are still occasionally what those alive would regard as sentimental. Nostalgic. But this too will pass. Sometimes the death of these habits or traditions or laws (whatever you want to call them, they’re called) saddens me in the extreme. Other times the passing of these frequencies, these inevitabilities, these inescapables, makes me happier than the vault can contain. Mostly however I am ambivalent about and to this death. Thriving off the fund of numb. And so to my death too. Sunned. Both were inevitable. Are. Or at least one happened and another will happen, and so you will notice that I still say and so think Will happen because a mind of mine still needs to think of or at least wants to believe in a future. Listen that that too will pass. Into waiting for waiting. Which will pass as well, on its own. There is no waiting in the future and there is no future in the (you understand). Listen and then passing will pass. Hearing too. Again await the all over again. Understand then listen anew.

A part of me: usually the head of my penis, or my left sagging testicle, the enraged animal yellowing a kidney of mine or else a fetus forever gestating there, maybe the taboo hindquarter of either thigh, perhaps my right fluttery eyelid—all destroyed once, all to be made whole once again and again in the sanctuary of every memory had—a part of me, whichever part, now still holds fast, cleaves one can say in my second language: Cleave, which in American means both To rend and To adhere, To cling close or Cleave that Aba said often Cleave that Aba always said was one of his favorite words in any language, in any of their opposing definitions sundering two meanings from one sound. Whichever shard of me cleaves to, still cleaves to and must cleave to history overwhelming. Whole half a millennium of waiting and waiting for redemption when our true redemption was in the waiting. And waiting. Again scales, slung across the whites of my Aba’s dead eyes again. If only he could have seen me now. And especially now that he can’t. An allowance, allow me. I left my permit in my pants on my body in blood on the earth. This me an indulgence as harmless as the Three popsicles? how the Queen always said You indulge him too much and how Aba wouldn’t disagree before dinner, bathtime, bed and then sleep (the way those red pops would melt from ice to water is my stain on the street, sticky with litter and pain). And so while this me lasts, however longingly long, I should like to consecrate this homesick history, mine—to vial and stop this mad gushing past. To save it. At least a portion thereof. To store it up for the famine attendant on hope. Bottle it corked for the Friday. Not for the sake of martyrs or teardrop lineages, of victories and all that insensate fell star stuff who could ever have hoped to have understood in life. But for and only for the sake of Them, theirs a sake of one dark’s duration it seems to me now if only for Their sake. I and this is almost too difficult, too said for me to say that
I cleave
to this identity for and only for the memory—mine—of my Aba and the Queen. For them how I loved them. And for the expectations they once had for my own memory. Expectations becoming love in their ripening. A memory to be had by others. Becoming. Others I never made in an image I felt becoming the world.

A
lef-Beit-Alef
. Heaven is like the early evening or as Aba always said Dusk into evening into night late night into early morning or as Aba always said Dawn of my tenth birthday the night before the day I died the morning I was murdered exploded incendiaried bombed blown up blasted away any way I died (but I didn’t know that then I only knew that the Queen wanted me needed me to go to sleep but first to have my bath and made Aba make sure of that though only after our dinner beginning with mushroom soup during which Aba said that his Aba my grandAba had known all the different kinds and multitudinously multinuminous species and other taxonomical types of mushrooms that he had picked them for years From the forests around his house in It wasn’t then ha’Ukraine Aba said It’s called mycology the study of mushrooms this Mushroomologic that there must be something to it this Mushroomtry this Mushroomsophy he went on and on laughing to himself until the Queen said to Be quiet and eat your soup it’s getting cold The Soup Aba always ate with a tablespoon and I always ate with a teaspoon though it was soup and not tea with mint which was served later though sometimes To demonstrate solidarity with my son as Aba always said he too ate his soup and not just mushroom soup but also pea soup and at other times beet soup which is called borscht and tomato soup too occasionally with a teaspoon and not the tablespoon Aba usually used though he never even once ate a table with it and which the Queen always used to eat her mushroom soup too which was set alongside a fork to eat her salad with Three firm ripe tomatoes the Queen always said and three peeled cucumbers and one pepper green with envy of its seeds removed to the trash as the Queen always said A few small green onions say three of them For good measure then olive oil good olive oil and the juice of half a lemon and salt and spices
Hyssopus
Aba always said and sometimes even When I’m feeling adventurous as the Queen would say when she’d added ginger grated or else a few chilies or at other times maybe a very small pinch of pepper Cayenne then mixed them all up together and they’re called a salad these agglomerates of different vegetables liquids and spices this amalgamation of diverse produce sprinklings and oil is called by just the one word
Salat
meaning
prayer
in Arabic the most important word to the Queen this Salad prayer the Queen always said to Eat your salad to grow up strong and live forever with your health as if a wife and so we did my Aba and I ate our salad and then the fish which fish I didn’t know because while it’s easy relatively easy to say that this is a chicken and that this is a cow that this is a lamb and that this is a turkey it’s difficult Relatively difficult as Aba always said that even meat it was Einsteinian or arguable at least for me to differentiate between fish like the two unrelated indistinguishable Dagim I had one I flushed the other I hope’s still swimming around Lake Kinneret is what I called his bowl the Sea of Galilee whose fish we had with a dill and lemon juice and paprika and mayonnaise homemade mayonnaise sauce to dip then for dessert a platter of fruits dates figs apricots and pears dried and fresh and nuts that was a present for my Aba from An elderly admirer all the way out in Gilo whose piano the previous week he my Aba had tuned for free then cleared the table to leave the dishes Yesterday you forgot the pots and pans to the Queen so that Aba he could give me my bath in the water he first had to negotiate with always first had to negotiate with negotiations were always going on in my house our apartment because our water was strange or rather it was that the process necessary to obtaining a temperature of the water or waters appropriate to desired for any given purpose say bathing me was A process as strange and involved as that of any political negotiation Aba always said what exactly it was was that the hot water tap produced only the most hot water gave forth the height of hot water and that oppositely the cold water tap gave forth only the coldest of cold waters almost freezing though not scientifically freezing as Aba once explained was o° Anders Celsius of Uppsala and so to achieve a livable median an acceptable if mud-died middleground of water temperature for conducive to let’s say bathing me required An artful and experienced manipulation of both taps and so both temperatures the boiling and the freezing to A happy medium Aba always said the two taps those twinned faucets pouring individually because it was An old porcelain tooth bathtub Aba always said it had to be replaced soon enough Any day now the Queen always said and so the mingling and so the mating of the two waters As if husband and wife was accomplished not down at the Dead Sea Desalinization Plant or in the Jerusalem Reservoir then through a unified pipe up through the length of a solitary faucet but in the tub and on me and around me and over me splashing in the tub having my bath with my splish toys the boats and the buoys and the frogs those many rubberized squeezies that I leaped enormously as if they were ADD/ADHD lambs mated with the most unmedicated of rams from the wilting lilies of the gunky green faucets to crash the cruising ships and tankers to bob the buoys transmitting their blip bleeping signals of distress gurgling as the soap became drowned in the whirlpool lost between my thighs just as my Aba wanted To wash my punim Aba always said then to wash my hair and rinse the stinging yellowgreen snot from out of my nostrils and hair which he said resembled a certain bush Moses once talked to in the wilderness of Sinai the wide purple towel the Royally purple one the Queen’s extra I always got to use when she didn’t need it when its Purpler twin wasn’t in the wash and smelling of her and even feeling of her skin that softness it was Aba’s as he pinched at me still dripping running from his pinches and dripping still soapy water to darken the hallway’s Oriental rug actually Persian Sultanabad and dizzyingly ornamented with various flora that as dead didn’t require my watering as Aba chased and cornered me against the wall of the hall under the photographs of relatives dead themselves but interred as image in wood under glass then picked me up upside down to walk more like stagger with me hanging my wet head down between his legs to my room banging my head then one of his bad knees usually always his weakest one that he hurt once in East Jerusalem and once again in Eilat on the door to my room and saying a word I know but I’m not allowed to repeat as he my Aba began with the story he always told me about the Rabbi of Polyn or with the stories he always now told me about the Rabbi of Polyn or else the one he always told me too about an eagle or sometimes a hawk or a raptor or maybe even a raven at other times that flew down when Aba was out on incursion excursion or exercises up in Lebanon that flew down and stole off his helmet which got him into serious trouble Another story he said it flew with it off and away because Birds Aba once said are the first to disrespect national sovereignty because birds are always the first to disregard territorial borders flew with Aba’s helmet straight to Jerusalem and there to Tchernichovsky Street our building and its third floor to the Queen’s kitchen window which was always open because as Aba would always say We should always keep everything open Aba always said Our windows our doors our minds and our hearts and the Queen who took it of course Aba said as a sign that Aba was dead either killed by the enemy or else in quote friendly unquote fire how he was hostaged or missing in action until Aba came home a week later because Aba he always came home and found Aba said that the Queen had not only just found out she was Pregnant with me he said but had also just used his helmet as a bowl in which to mix up the batter of a cake in some versions an apple cake in others a plum or plain bundt of any cake she was making for the old women woman Or maybe it was a man Aba said Aba didn’t remember and often told it either way who then lived downstairs in what was later the Maier’s apartment but who now was dead and is still who Died a day before or else After your bris Aba would alternately say after the first mohel he didn’t show up with the guests waiting around like pent livestock then the second mohel the first mohel’s son didn’t show up either by the time they’d already gorged themselves on the rugelach all ten trays of the stuff I’d had to order in from Marzipan down on Agrippas Street Only the best meaning only the most costly for the Queen as she wasn’t just then in any shape to slave in the kitchen for all these guests drunk with the schnapps and Wodka I’d laid out and some even felt it necessary to leave early and others to go to sleep to take a nap on the couch by the time the third mohel he showed up the son of the second mohel and the grandson of the first his grandAba who finally did it and did it well though he and despite his having been brought up as a Kotzker a Gerer anyway insisted on sucking away in surprise Aba said I was nervous it being the third mohel’s first bris yours I mean being the first er um putz the Rav ever cut though all turned out fine better for you than for me I mean what with the amount of drinking I did even after it all was over and you were back to bed sleeping soundly Aba said as you should be sleeping right now it’s so late and so instead tonight that night I mean to say he my Aba told me no story at all not the Polisher Rebbe story and not the story of Lebanon Aba said it was after all Altogether too late and said further that if I was good and went to sleep right away meaning not much later than now then he would owe me not one but amazingly two stories for tomorrow night we had begun bargaining haggling handling like this was the Shuk as if this were a table I had had in a past life in the marketsquare at Peshischa and not my very own bedroom in which Aba would be beholden to me for both the story set in Poland and the Lebanon story and so I said to him Aba OK which is an American word we liked to say to one another I said 10-4 B.ravo C.harlie Fine by the movies agreed to his terms You’re the boss I said which we liked to say too because what else could I do besides what I did which was to try to get to sleep right away because now at least it felt like I had something to think about something to remember to preserve like pickled pomegranate or like the jellies the preserves and spreads that downstairs Misses Soloff flecked with the rusty rind of the etrog both sour and sweetened them the many versions of these manifold stories I remembered or tried to remember To compare and contrast them as my teacher Moreh Kulp at the school terribly next door on Tchernichovsky Street always said to hold them both up as if the two tablets of the Ten Commandments to smash against Aba’s fivefold versions on the night that would begin not tomorrow but the day after that hasn’t yet dawned but when Aba he said the Shema O Israel the Adonai our Elohaynu the Adonai is One both Adonai and Elohaynu and many other names just as much I didn’t know as he kissed me goodnight Laila Tov Yom Huledet Sameach as he turned out the light I found much to my astonishment dismay mystification perplexity too all at once I couldn’t just then remember any version of either of the two stories he my Aba most often told whether it be the Poland story or the Lebanon story or even the occasional Time the Taxi got me Lost in Queens and I Missed your Cousins’ Wedding story I couldn’t remember any of them that night not even my favorite which was the Polisher Rebbe story my favorites which could have been on any one occasion any one of three Polisher Rebbe stories none of which I could remember that night that in one of them the Polisher Rebbe was asked by a Prominent Gentile though it’s not known as the Prominent Gentile Story “Do gentiles have souls?” and the Polisher Rebbe answered him “that since you a gentile and a Prominent Gentile at that asked that question that that question must then stand as your proof and as ours that Yes you indeed
do have a soul”
while in another a man he’s a Jewish man and he’s dying an Old Poor Jewish Man he’s dying as usual and the Polisher Rebbe he tells him to go to the Polisher Priest and convert to have himself converted to Christianity Catholicism whatever it is that they believe in the Popes and so the poor old Jewish man goes to the Polishist Priest and converts and lives In fact he lives only because he converts but when the next New Year comes around Rosh Hashanah meaning the Head of the Year how he heads to shul anyway his feet take him there and for the very first time since his conversion it’s as if he felt he had to go was impelled felt compelled by Something the God of the Other and the moment he crosses over the threshold of the shul the synagogue it falls in on itself collapses and crushes all the assembled praying to death their own Kaddish in the third Polisher Rebbe story the Polisher Rebbe receives prophecy in a dream though in another occasional variant a highly placed and paid Police Informant informs the Polisher Rebbe that gevalt a pogrom is to take place tonight and so Der Polisher Rebbe that was his name he goes to all of the town’s the village’s the shtetl’s tailors and from them collects tailors’ dummies all of their mannequins and then has them all dressed up like Jews then sends for all the Jews’ goats and cows and calves and chickens too for all of their animals and has them too all dressed up like Jews Aba said Like Hasidim they looked with their dark hats and dark suits and white shirts and dark yarmulkes and white tzitzit and black payos and cool Asian imitation RAYBAN sunglasses on all these tailors’ dummies for the gentiles Goyim to slaughter instead then evacuates all the Jews all the Real Jews to another town a nearby village a neighboring shtetl though just for the night during which they won’t sleep a fortieth of a wink because when they all return to their shtetl the next morning early at the rise of the sun they find a whole ghetto of Jews they’d never known before whom they’d never seen before in their lives never heard of Jews all cleaning up from last night’s chaos disaster sweeping up window glass mess fathers and mothers mopping up children all the old tailors’ dummies and livestock brought to life come to life conscience and good housekeeping and so the Jews have to leave there’s no room for them anymore in their old houses Ancestral homes Aba said they have to abandon in search of another homeland to find yet another Source Aba said are the stories that night I forgot the stories I couldn’t recall I couldn’t remember though I tried no matter how hard squinting my eyes pressed and pushed on my stomach like I do when I’m trying to go to the toilet to Pish before bed which I forgot Aba always insisted upon but just as standing At military attention at then sitting upon the Waterless old newspaper older magazine toilet that night lying I soon enough tired myself out with just thinking or actually not thinking at least trying not to think and instead occupied myself with reading all of the titles off all the books high up on the bookshelf all the way across my huge it seemed room it seemed in the dark facing my bed to swallow me with its many mouths that were only shelves of more teeth that were books but I could only make out I could only read the titles of the books that were closest to the crack of the door the sliver of hallway’s glowworm nightlight I insisted on remaining open and on and the books they just had the same titles I knew from every night I remembered A HANDBOOK OF SOCCER RULES a few fake abridged versions for kids of the selected works of Jules Verne HOW TO SPEAK GERMAN IN TEN EASY LESSONS and then as a bookend a Tanach with my barmitzvah portion bookmarked with a leaf from the “aspen” in our backyard I had to begin studying in the fall the same portion my Aba had the first one which is the portion called Genesis of the book that’s also called Genesis because